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Well Before Summer, Hamptons Luxury Real Estate Is Scorching

A bidding war broke out last year for a 14-bedroom 1891 mansion on two acres in East Hampton Village. Listed at $24.5 million, the property sold for $25.75 million.

ering the bulkheads and merchandising the seductive strata of housing stock (from darling shingled cottages to resorts-masquerading-as-mansions), with brokers forecasting yet another pricey summer season. “Nobody really suffers from Hamptons sticker shock anymore,” said Judi Desiderio, the founder of Town and Country Real Estate.
Harald Grant, a senior vice president of Sotheby’s International Realty, has already rented out an oceanfront house in Southampton for $550,000 for the month of August alone and has a stack of 14 contracts and purchase memos on his desk representing pending sales of $4.5 million to $25 million. Not to worry: the most expensive oceanfront property in the Hamptons, on East Hampton’s Lily Pond Lane and co-listed by Tim Davis of the Corcoran Group and Diane Saatchi of Saunders & Associates, is still available for $40 million.
For high-rolling renters, Mr. Grant has a trio of oceanfront rentals in Southampton that can be had for the summer for $400,000, $600,000 or $800,000. Why pay $25 million to buy, and more to maintain, a summer getaway when you can rent and run? Or, for a million or so, you can rent year round.
“But in general what’s different this season,” Mr. Grant said, “is that in the mind of most buyers, less is more, and nobody wants to be the king of the hill and flaunt their wealth the way people were doing before the recession.
“Folks who spent $20,000 for a month’s rental,” he continued, “may be looking to spend $15,000. Folks who could be driving a Rolls-Royce are settling for a Mercedes. People aren’t saying, ‘I have to have it; I’ll pay anything,’ and writing checks on the spot. An owner who says, ‘I want $32 million for my oceanfront house’ probably isn’t going to get it. He’ll get somewhere in the mid-20s.”
But only if the house has a pool, a tennis court and central air-conditioning; just being oceanfront isn’t enough anymore.
Still, abundant deals are to be had for perceptive buyers who don’t require fur vaults, wine caves or home theaters.
“I just sold a wonderful house for $2.9 million in Southampton Village,” Mr. Grant said. “Five bedrooms, five bathrooms and a pool on half an acre. My clients would have liked a tennis court, but instead of spending $5 million, they scaled back a bit and they’re happy and comfortable with that decision.”

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The Hamptons, for $500,000

“Everything on the lower end of the scale was either a total teardown, which would make a mortgage impossible, or in an undesirable area,” said Mr. Maplestone, 34, a video editor based in Brooklyn.
They had all but given up the hunt earlier this year when Ms. Fisk, 32, a sales strategy director, found an online listing for a $499,000, two-bedroom house on nearly half an acre in Montauk that had just been reduced. Not only was it in walking distance to the beach and town, the yard abutted nearly 40 acres of protected land, ensuring privacy.
“I had a contractor take a look to make sure I wasn’t missing something because I thought for sure this was too good to be true,” Mr. Maplestone said. The couple bought the house for $450,000, put in a new kitchen and bath, doors and windows, and began using it as a weekend getaway earlier this month. “We definitely feel we got a deal,” Mr. Maplestone said.
Not so long ago, half a million dollars wouldn’t buy half an acre in much of the Hamptons. But now that the market has recalibrated and prices have begun to stabilize, a growing number of modest but more affordable properties are popping up for $500,000 or less, creating opportunities for second-home buyers who were previously priced out.
“It’s slowly begun to come back to where prices are of relative value and people can justify them,” said Joseph De Sane, a senior vice president in Corcoran’s Bridgehampton office. He pointed out some listings he called “top values,” including a four-bedroom renovated Cape for $499,000 on nearly an acre at the edge of East Hampton Village that recently went into contract and a $455,000, move-in-ready three-bedroom with central air-conditioning, hardwood floors throughout and a large deck spanning the full width of the house in North Sea. “We’re seeing a bit more in the way of quality,” he said.
There were 720 homes listed for $500,000 or less in the second quarter of 2012, down slightly from the same period last year, but up 11.8 percent from the second quarter of 2010, according to StreetEasy.com. The median listing price was $385,000, down slightly compared with the second quarter of 2011. Though most homes for less than half a million are small, you can now get slightly more space for your money. The size of a home in that price range increased by 10 percent to 1,102 median square feet in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2010, according to StreetEasy.com.
Sure, more affordable places have long been available in less-sought-after neighborhoods west of the Shinnecock Canal, including the hamlets of East Quogue and Hampton Bays. But attractive properties are now available in more coveted locales east of the canal, which cuts across the South Fork at Hampton Bays, demarcating the more exclusive hamlets and villages running from Southampton to Montauk.
Take the well-maintained three-bedroom cottage with a wraparound deck on a shy half-acre a block from Otter Pond, tennis courts and Main Street in Sag Harbor Village, listed by Sotheby’s International for $480,000, recently reduced from $499,000. Or the three-bedroom with an updated kitchen, gas fireplace and large backyard in Southampton Village, listed by Prudential Douglas Elliman at $495,000, down from $549,000 in 2011.
Outside the villages the deals get better, including larger properties with more amenities for less money. Consider a refurbished three-bedroom, two-bath Southampton home with a wood-burning stove, eat-in-kitchen and a new deck near Big Fresh Pond, listed by Corcoran for $420,000. Or a three-bedroom, two-bath contemporary in Clearwater Beach, a private beach community in East Hamptons Springs, with central air conditioning and a heated pool on nearly an acre listed by Corcoran that was reduced by $20,000 to $495,000.

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More Square Footage for a Shoeless Cook

In the mid ’90s, on her second career (her first was working as a budget analyst handling nuclear policy in the Carter administration), running a gourmet foods store in East Hampton, N.Y., she found herself spilling out of her house. So she called a friend, Frank Newbold, a real estate broker in the Hamptons who later became her business partner, and said: “I don’t know what to do. I can’t expand this.”
“Well,” Mr. Newbold said, “Why don’t you just buy the property up the street?”
So she did, building a larger version of her shingle-style farmhouse.
It was a perfect solution until 1999, when she wrote “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook,” sold more than a million copies, and became, once again, a woman running out of space. A problem worth having? No doubt, but nevertheless a real one, since Ms. Garten needed a kitchen large enough for herself and an assistant to test recipes.
She decided the solution was to build an entirely new kitchen. But that would mean expanding onto the lot next door, which wasn’t for sale.
“Every year,” Ms. Garten said, “I used to call the guy who owned the property next door. And every year, he’d send me a note back saying ‘no.’ ” This went on for about 10 years. “And one year I wrote to him and he didn’t write back, and I said, ‘Did he forget?’ A couple of months later, he called me and said, ‘Let’s talk after the New Year.’ ”
After working out a deal to buy the land in 2006, Ms. Garten and her architect, Frank Greenwald of East Hampton, started from scratch, taking a year to build a streamlined kitchen in a rustic barn with soaring ceilings. There she housed everything she needed: two Sub-Zero refrigerators, an eight-burner Viking stove, two ovens, Belgian stone countertops, open shelves, a tall 17th-century Italian cabinet for china and glassware, and a long antique Swiss pine dining table for friends she invites over to try new dishes.
“Because it’s new construction,” she said, “I didn’t want it to look brand-spanking-new. I wanted it to feel like it had patina.”
For the record, Ms. Garten’s husband, Jeffrey Garten, a former official in the Clinton administration, did almost nothing to help. As Ms. Garten sees it, this is exactly as it should be. “He’s the best husband. He says, ‘Do whatever you’d like.’ And when it’s done, he says, ‘That’s the most fantastic thing I’ve ever seen.’ He’s very good at that.”
Ms. Garten put in a little bit of art (like a painting of the Namib Desert by April Gornik) to give the kitchen some life, but there’s nothing terribly fancy about it. “I hate design that tries too hard,” she said. “Anything that looks like design, that says, ‘Aren’t I fabulous,’ is totally without style. It needs to fit in, it needs to be appropriate, it needs to be comfortable.”
Perhaps most important, she didn’t want her work space to look anything like a set, even if her show for the Food Network is filmed there. “I didn’t do it for TV,” she said. “I did it for books. And if it looks like a set, it doesn’t feel real.” Her latest book, “Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust,” comes out at the end of this month.
Could anyone or anything persuade her to move? “I can’t imagine how,” she said, as workmen hammered and sawed away on yet another addition, this time for a cookbook library and sitting room. “I can’t believe I get to live here.”

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In the Hamptons, Bargain Chic

THERE was a time, not long ago, when some Hamptons residents were flipping homes here for obscene returns.
Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, started buying oceanfront properties in Southampton in 1997. He renovated and resold them, usually doubling his money every two years, he said. In the decade between 1997 and 2007, “all the properties I bought on the ocean went up between five and seven times in value after a little bit of work,” he said.
Mr. Burch, 59, was luckier than most. Marketwide, prices about doubled in the Hamptons in that decade, and most sellers tripled or quadrupled their investment after renovating, said Jonathan J. Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal firm.
When I caught up with Mr. Burch the other day at a book-signing at his Southampton home for the author Gigi Levangie Grazer, he spoke about high-end Hamptons real estate as if there had been a death in the family.
“I just don’t think it has come back at all,” he said.
In fact, the volume of sales of prime Hamptons properties is down more than 20 percent from when the market peaked in mid-2007, brokers said. The Hamptons have become a solid buyer’s market, where listings at all price ranges are plentiful and huge price reductions are common.
“If homes aren’t priced correctly, they probably won’t even be shown,” said Harald Grant, a broker at Sotheby’s International Realty.
While the luxury Hamptons market — with sales over $20 million — is recovering at a faster pace than the rest of the market, there is little wow factor in what’s been happening lately.
The Hamptons provide a stunning contrast to what’s going on some 90 miles away in Manhattan, where high-end sales continue to break records and the potential for a $100 million sale no longer boggles the imagination.
The priciest oceanfront sale in the Hamptons this year, closing in February, was a two-acre property in Southampton that went for $28.5 million. Mr. Grant represented the Meadow Lane home’s buyer, a South American.
That’s a far cry from the spectacular sales in the boom years, like the $103 million that the billionaire Ron Baron paid in 2007 for 40 acres of undeveloped waterfront property in East Hampton. Mr. Grant still remembers one woman that year who turned down an unsolicited offer of $70 million for her Southampton home.
“The trophy sales aren’t really happening any longer,” Mr. Grant said. “In our market for oceanfront, $28.5 million was an average price.”
The high-end Hamptons market has moved in fits and starts. Last year there were two sales over $30 million — one for $32.5 million in Southampton and another for $36 million in North Haven. And this year there have been six sales of $20 million or more, all closing before May.
The lost market that Mr. Burch laments may have been built on loose credit and associated Wall Street profits, as Mr. Miller impressed on me. But perception is often reality.
Conversation around the Hamptons punch bowl used to touch frequently on the rising prices of people’s estates, but it rarely does anymore, Mr. Burch said.
“People were excited about making good investments and that their property values were going up,” he said. “Today, real estate is just not as much of a conversation piece as it was in the past. People talk about their families, their kids’ schools, about preserving the environment.”
That was certainly the case at the event to celebrate Ms. Grazer’s latest beach read, “The After Wife” (Ballantine), about how a Los Angeles woman copes with the death of her husband.
The low-key event drew a smattering of celebrities, socialites and the powerful. The mogul Russell Simmons made the rounds, as did Rita Schrager, the ex-wife of the hotelier Ian Schrager, and Michael Michele, an actress who appeared in the movie “Ali.” There was talk of the presidential election — Mr. Simmons said he had just returned from a “strategy session” with President Obama — and plenty of chatter about the fifth book from the leggy and hilarious Ms. Grazer, the ex-wife of the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.

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Restoring an Old House and Putting Down Deeper Roots

BOB Weinstein was happy in Sag Harbor, in the little gray house on Suffolk Street he had owned for a decade. It was a quiet second home on a lot thick with old-growth trees, away from the busiest parts of the roughly 260-year-old former whaling village on the South Fork of Long Island, but a short walk from a downtown lined with restaurants and small shops.

Bob Weinstein (in print shirt at far right) and Eric Hensley prepared for Mr. Hensley’s birthday party.
He was so happy, in fact, that he and his longtime partner, Eric Hensley, got used to making the two-hour drive out to Sag Harbor every weekend, all year long, and sometimes when they only had one night — though they already lived in a 5,600-square-foot loft in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where Mr. Weinstein also runs a brand positioning and graphic design company.
Both dwellings were furnished in the same style: sleekly modern, full of mid-20th-century modernist furniture picked up over the years at auctions, antique stores, the 26th Street flea market in Manhattan and yard sales in Sag Harbor.
There were tables and settees from names like Florence Knoll and George Nelson in the Sag Harbor house, a basement studio where Mr. Weinstein produced monoprint artwork and a sun-drenched room off the back for weekend relaxing.
“I think we really live here,” Mr. Hensley, 40, a former fashion stylist who now works as a flight attendant, said on a mild recent Saturday in the village. “It could be snowing, it could be raining — we’re always here.”
Friends who knew the home the couple had made for themselves amid the house’s clean, quiet lines, were surprised by what Mr. Weinstein — who is not the film producer of the same name — did next. He bought another house down the block, spending more than $2 million on a rambling old homestead on a nearly one-acre lot with low ceilings and a picket fence that had been in the same family for four generations.
Built in the mid-1700s with a series of additions that began about a century later, the house, on the corner of Suffolk and Jefferson Streets, came on the market when the previous owner, a 100-year-old woman who was born there, died. Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Hensley, it turned out, had been curious about the place for years, eyeing it on their way toward Main Street, or on walks with their grayish-black terrier, Spencer.
“We’d walk along that long white fence and sort of slow down, peer into the property through the overgrown boxwoods,” Mr. Weinstein recalled, “and we’d catch a glimpse of the old chicken coop, the old carriage house, walk by the old hitching post, and we’d just sort of wonder about its history, all the things that may have happened during the centuries of people living in that house.”
So, ever the antiques collector, Mr. Weinstein pounced. “I just knew it would be very hard for me to have never done this project, and to have been on Suffolk Street, and walking by all the time,” he said, wincing a bit at the thought.
Mr. Weinstein, whose wry smile and athletic frame make him look younger than his 49 years, said this while perched on a stool under a newly vaulted ceiling and near a hanging 1960s Swedish light fixture made of spun aluminum.
But amid these and other modern touches, like the new saltwater Gunite pool, other details are meant to keep the house grounded in the past: there are still 150-year-old boxwoods outside, most of the original windows and moldings remain, and a rosewood Saarinen table rests on 150-year-old floorboards, some as wide as 20 inches, that were bleached and refinished to a pale white.
A massive wooden cabinet that once held a previous owner’s law files — “It had little index cards with thumbtacks hanging: ‘Foreclosures, A to B,’ ” Mr. Weinstein said — is now a dresser in the hall outside the main bedroom. In the mud room downstairs, a coat rack was salvaged from the carriage house, where Mr. Weinstein believes it may have once held saddles.
While the house retains a sense of its history, though, it has also been transformed into something loftlike — not what it was, but not quite what Mr. Weinstein’s other places are either. It is bright inside, even on a cloudy afternoon, and open: Mr. Weinstein likes to position visitors at a few strategic locations and tell them to look right and left, where they can see all the way from one end of the house to the other.
“I think 10 years of sharp minimalism made me feel that maybe it’s time to let loose a little bit,” he said, adding that, as always, part of the appeal was the challenge. “I wanted to see if I could take my eye and blend my midcentury furniture into a setting that is midcentury — but mid-18th century.”
Mr. Weinstein started planning the renovation, in fact, in the spring of 2005, long before the sale was complete, using a methodology called “Image Architecture” that his company, Concrete Brand Imaging Group, developed to help clients define their brand identities. In a briefing for his architect, Mr. Weinstein highlighted the emotional and cultural factors involved in his purchase and transformation of the property.

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No, They’re Not the Kardashians

America may have glamorous socialites and reality-show celebutantes like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, but when it comes to seriously conspicuous spending, it’s hard to top Britain’s Ecclestone sisters.
Especially when it comes to real estate.
The Ecclestone heirs, Petra Stunt, 24, and Tamara Ecclestone, 28, have spent well over $200 million between them on homes — and home makeovers — in London and Los Angeles. And their spending sprees seem to have fuel to burn.
Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, the 82-year-old billionaire owner of Formula One racing, set aside $4.5 billion in Bambino Holdings, a trust fund primarily intended to be used by his ex-wife, Slavica Rasic, and daughters for real estate investments.
But are these extravagant homes and renovations what Mr. Ecclestone had in mind?
Mrs. Stunt, the younger sister, made waves on this side of the Atlantic two years ago when she bought the late television producer Aaron Spelling’s “Manor” in Holmby Hills for $85 million — still the highest price ever paid for a home in Los Angeles County. She then spent close to $20 million renovating the 57,000-square-foot home, a project that involved some 500 workers who toiled around the clock, according to brokers involved in the sale. What was the rush? She had only three months to get the job done before her wedding to the British entrepreneur James Stunt.
Mrs. Stunt also reportedly owns a town house in the Chelsea neighborhood of London that she bought in 2010 for about $90 million.
Not to be outdone, her sister in 2011 ordered the opulent renovation of the London home on Kensington Palace Gardens, the most expensive street in the country, that she had bought for $70 million. The plans, whose price tag The Daily Mail put at about $27 million, called for a bowling alley, a hair salon and a dog spa.
Lately Ms. Ecclestone has been renting a home in Bel-Air (not far from her sister’s mansion) for $150,000 a month while she house-hunts in Los Angeles. Her search has taken her to Fleur de Lys, a $125 million listing in Holmby Hills modeled after a French palace. More recently she toured a home nearby built on the site of the former Walt Disney estate, now owned by Gabriel Brener, the scion of a Mexican industrialist, who is asking $85 million for his 35,000-square-foot home, once the site of a one-eighth-scale train that Disney used to give neighbors rides on.
Is this a case of sibling rivalry? The British tabloids and some Los Angeles brokers have speculated as much. A better question might be whether Ms. Ecclestone is a real buyer, or is just looking for attention.
The British media have generally portrayed the sisters as spoiled publicity hounds, and have quoted their father criticizing the way they were spending their trust funds. He was none too pleased in 2011 when his elder daughter did a three-part British reality show called “Billion $$ Girl,” which chronicled her lavish lifestyle. That same year she posed naked on her bed fondling £1 million in cash for the photographer Tyler Shields. (Efforts to reach the Ecclestone sisters through business representatives were unsuccessful.)
Perhaps a little too serendipitously, TMZ reporters have been able to interview Ms. Ecclestone as she has been spotted leaving a few majestic estates around Los Angeles.
One broker familiar with her search said Ms. Ecclestone thought the Brener home was too small. “She liked the grounds but found the house not grand enough,” said the broker, who declined to be identified, citing client confidentiality.
She also toured the 24,000-square-foot compound that the “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest bought from the comedian Ellen DeGeneres last year for $37 million. “It was different,” she told TMZ
Brokers in Los Angeles are itching for someone — a billionaire heiress would do nicely — to break the $100 million barrier on a home sale. Two homes in the San Francisco Bay Area have sold for $100 million or more, the most recent being a house in Silicon Valley that sold for $117.5 million, reportedly to a Japanese billionaire.
It’s not as if owners in Los Angeles weren’t trying, though. Some of the best estates in the Bel Air/Beverly Hills/Holmby Hills triangle, where most of the priciest homes are, have been listed above $100 million, including Fleur de Lys, the Beverly House ($115 million) and the financier Gary Winnick’s eight-acre spread in Bel-Air, which he wants to sell for $225 million, brokers said.

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What You Get for ... $1,550,000

WHAT: A four-bedroom midcentury modern with four baths
HOW MUCH: $1,549,000
SIZE: 3,368 square feet
PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT: $459.92
SETTING: Encino is an affluent section of Los Angeles on the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains, bordering city and state parkland extending to the Pacific Ocean. This house is on a curving residential road less than a half-mile from the Encino Reservoir. Neighboring properties are a mix of midcentury moderns, ranches and large, newer houses built on teardown lots. Ventura Boulevard, a commercial corridor two miles away, is lined with grocery stores, small shopping centers and restaurants, including a preponderance of sushi bars (almost 10 places within a couple miles). Nearby San Vicente Mountain Park, high above an unpaved section of Mulholland Drive, has 360-degree views and access to horse and mountain-biking trails.
INDOORS: This single-story L-shape midcentury modern was built in 1964, with walls of glass overlooking the city and canyon. Common areas are on an open floor plan, with nearly every room oriented around the patio and pool. Seventy-two solar panels were built on the roof within the past few years, powering the property, and most rooms now have built-in speakers with individual room volume control. Floors are terrazzo in the entryway; in the rest of the house, they’re Pebble Tec, a mixture of epoxy and pebbles commonly used to finish pools, selected here to give the house an indoor/outdoor feel. The living room and adjoining den both have gas fireplaces. A Sub-Zero refrigerator was added to the kitchen within the past few years. Three of the bedrooms, including the master, are at one end of the house; the other, a suite, is beyond the kitchen. The master bedroom is part of a suite with a bathroom, a dressing room and access to the pool and patio.
OUTDOOR SPACE: Adjoining the pool is a lawn and garden. The lot is a little over a third of an acre.
TAXES: $19,362.50 (approximately)
CONTACT: JB Fung, John Aaroe Group, (323) 687-1170; modernlivingla.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.
WHAT: A six-bedroom house with four and a half bathrooms
HOW MUCH: $1,535,000
SIZE: 5,254 square feet
PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT: $292.16
SETTING: This house is in a residential pocket about a mile and a half from both the University of Virginia and downtown Charlottesville, a brick pedestrian mall lined with historic buildings, oak trees, shops, galleries and outdoor cafes where someone, somewhere always seems to be playing an instrument. Just north of downtown — and about a 10-minute walk from this house — is a rolling, wooded city park with mountain views. Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Mountains are about an hour west; Washington is about two hours north.
INDOORS: The three-story house was built in 1935 and extensively renovated between 2008 ad 2010. Wall-to-wall carpet was pulled up and original hardwood floors were refinished; the interior also retains original molding, chair rails and built-in shelves. Both the formal living and dining rooms have wood-burning fireplaces with original mantels. Opposite the living room is a parlor, and across the hall from it is a library. A sunroom with green-glaze terra-cotta tile floors was added off the living room. Sliding glass doors open to a brick terrace.
The updated kitchen has granite countertops, a Bosch dishwasher and a six-burner Ilve range. The cabinets, original to the house, are made of white metal, which the owners had sandblasted and refinished at a body shop. Off the kitchen is a butler’s pantry and a breakfast room. There are bedroom suites on both the first and second floors, with three other bedrooms on the second floor. The sixth bedroom is in the finished basement, along with a workshop, an office and a garage.
OUTDOOR SPACE: A little over an acre, with a large side yard.
TAXES: $12,000 (in 2012)
CONTACT: Bob Headrick, Nest Realty, (434) 242-8501; nestrealty.com
PHOENIX
WHAT: A three-bedroom Tudor revival with three bathrooms
HOW MUCH: $1,550,000
SIZE: 4,459 square feet
PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT: $347.61
SETTING: This house is in a residential neighborhood known variously as North Central or Central Corridor, a 10-minute drive from downtown Phoenix. Developed in the early 20th century, the neighborhood features a mix of architectural styles, including French Provincials and Tudor revivals alongside sprawling ranches and large, newer houses, many of them on tree-shaded lots. An old bridle path now used by hikers, bikers and joggers runs alongside the road on which this house sits, shaded by ash and olive trees.
INDOORS: The house, a two-story Tudor revival made using adobe brick, was built in 1929 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Aside from a couple of additions and updated appliances in the kitchen, the interior is original. Off the entryway is a great room with a pitched wood-paneled ceiling, a fireplace and leaded-glass French doors opening to gardens. Set into a small alcove on one wall is a painting of an English village and church — also original to the house. Adjoining the great room is a formal dining room and a breakfast nook, also with leaded-glass French doors opening to a back patio.
The kitchen, expanded in 2001, has stainless-steel appliances including a Viking range, marble and soapstone counters, and a wood-burning pizza oven. A former two-car garage was incorporated into the main house and converted to a family room with wood-paneled walls and a beehive fireplace. All bathrooms feature original tiles imported from England. The master suite, on the first floor, has a wood-paneled office. The other two bedrooms are upstairs, as is a sunroom. Also on the property is a barn, now used as a studio, a pool and a pool house.
OUTDOOR SPACE: The house is on an acre and a quarter of land.
TAXES: $3,893.30
CONTACT: Cionne McCarthy and Bob Gojkovich, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, (602) 619-4550/(602) 432-9807

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Bob Hope Estate in Palm Springs Is Up for Sale

Perched high in the exclusive Southridge community, with panoramic views of the Coachella Valley, including the city of Palm Springs and the San Jacinto Mountains, the 23,366-square-foot home was designed in 1973 by the California Modernist architect John Lautner. It was built to resemble a volcano, with three visorlike arches and an undulating concrete roof, a hole at its center opening a courtyard to the sky. The roofline has been described as one of the most distinctive works of architecture in the Coachella Valley. The house has also been likened to a giant mushroom. Its original wood frame burned down during construction, in a fire sparked by a welder. Work was finally completed in 1980.
Used mostly as a second home and entertaining space by the Hope family, it can accommodate as many as 300 guests for dinner under an enormous covered terrace. Each January for many years, the family threw a huge dinner party to mark the end of the Bob Hope Classic golf tournament, now called the Humana Challenge. “That was sort of a highlight of the desert social calendar,” said Linda Hope, a daughter of the couple.
Mr. Hope died in 2003 at the age of 100; Mrs. Hope died in 2011 at 102. “Mother and Dad would sing together,” Ms. Hope said.
Tony Bennett, Glen Campbell and film starlets would visit the home. A big buffet would be laid out on the terraced patio, including Mrs. Hope’s famous antipasto salad, which she insisted on mixing herself, adding the vinegar and oil by eye. A clear tent was put up on part of the terrace to keep out the cold while still allowing guests to take in the spectacular nighttime view. “The whole desert was at your feet,” Linda Hope said.
The home, which is being listed with Ann Eysenring, a broker with Partners Trust Real Estate of Beverly Hills, and Patrick Jordan and Stewart Smith of Windermere Real Estate in Palm Springs, has 6 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, 3 half baths, indoor and outdoor pools, a pond, putting greens and a tennis court.
Mr. Lautner, the architect, eventually distanced himself from the project after Mrs. Hope hired a designer to make changes to the interior. None of them constituted a major alteration of the Lautner design, which includes a boulder jutting into the living room; she simply made interior modifications to make it “more livable,” according to Linda Hope. The changes included extending the dining room toward a balcony and making it possible to get from the bedrooms to the front door without crossing a patio, Ms. Hope said.
“I think my mother was a frustrated architect,” she added, noting Mrs. Hope’s serial remodeling of their primary home in Toluca Lake, Calif. “My dad used to say every time he went away he needed a road map to get back through his house.”
In Palm Springs, Mrs. Hope commissioned the artist Garth Benton, who painted the murals on the garden walls at the Getty Villa educational center and museum in Malibu, to paint a Rousseau-like mural on the back wall of the bar, and a lush, greenhouse-like wall of plants in the spa, which houses a pool, a hot tub and an exercise area.
It was Mrs. Hope who spent the most time at the Palm Springs house, while her husband traveled extensively, and famously, for work. Each November, Mrs. Hope would travel from Toluca Lake with a caravan of cars to carry the clothes, dishes and silverware she thought she would need for the season. “People used to laugh and say, the court is moving,” Linda Hope joked, adding: “She absolutely adored the place. My dad did, too.” But it wasn’t until her parents were in their late 80s and 90s, she said, that they really spent more time there together.
Bob and Dolores Hope, who were avid golfers, loved the desert, Ms. Hope said. The Lautner-designed house was their third home in Palm Springs and their “dream house.”

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Hate Valet? Not to Worry; Help Is at Hand

But imagine a different world, one free of such proletarian strivers. You pull into your high-end condo building, drive your car onto a steel pallet and shut off the engine. The glass door of the oversized elevator closes and you and your car are whisked upward at 650 feet per minute. The elevator stops on the floor of your apartment and deposits your car in your parking space. You get out and walk a few steps into your home. As an added bonus, a glass wall separates your private garage from your living room, so you can stare at your fine automobile from your couch, as if it were in a showroom.
That reality doesn’t quite exist yet in the United States.
But a Miami developer, Gil Dezer, has planned such a system for the Porsche Design Tower Miami, a luxury condo complex in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. The development, which has already sold over half of its 132 units, is expected to be ready in early 2016. In the meantime, a smattering of residential buildings in New York, Miami and Los Angeles boast fully — and semi — automated parking systems that are time savers for residents, and space savers for developers.
To me it seems like the ultimate amenity for the car-obsessed. Parking attendants, however well-meaning, are human, and a parking garage can be a house of horrors, especially in a place like Manhattan, where every inch counts. And for celebrities and billionaires trying to keep their activities as secret as possible, who’s to say whether the friendly valet isn’t a tipster for a gossip blog?
“We have some celebrities who bought specifically because they don’t have to see any valets or security when they come into the building,” Mr. Dezer said. “They don’t need to sign autographs, they don’t need to take pictures.”
In New York only one building, 200 11th Avenue, where Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban reportedly own an apartment, has created a parking system that lets residents ascend with their cars to their apartments. And it’s not even fully automated. In fact it seemed fraught with peril at first glance. Residents drive into the garage and onto a car elevator, shut off the engine, and then, once the elevator has risen to their floor, have to back their car themselves into the private space next to their unit.
It sounded to me like a recipe for scratch city, especially with my poor driving instincts. But Leonard Steinberg, a broker with Douglas Elliman who lives in the building, designed by Annabelle Selldorf, and who worked on its development, said that residents had encountered few problems with the system since the building opened in 2010. He says the elevator does not operate until the car is shut off. When the resident arrives with the car at the apartment, a sensor automatically turns on the lights and an exhaust fan in the garage.
“The only area where you have to have a little bit of skill is backing up in your garage; beyond that it is pretty basic stuff,” said Mr. Steinberg, who acknowledged that he is the only resident who doesn’t have one of the private garages. “The people that live in the building and use this system are really loving it.”

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House Hunting in ... Scotland

$2,384,794 (£1.6 MILLION)
This five-bedroom house spread over about 4,100 square feet is in a historic residential neighborhood, the Blacket Conservation Area, south of Edinburgh’s city center. Built in 1858 on a third of an acre, it has a sandstone exterior and a slate roof. A recent renovation has preserved original details like floorboards, ceiling moldings and four fireplaces.
The house is entered through a portico on the second of three floors. Beyond a small vestibule, and accessed via a long hallway, are several rooms, among them a bedroom with a marble fireplace and a large kitchen with original Scotch pine floorboards, white Ikea cabinets, black granite countertops, and a custom-made stainless steel backsplash. Appliances and finishes include a Smeg gas oven and a Franke faucet.
The kitchen opens to a living room, which has French doors leading to a terrace. The view from there of the expansive back lawn encompasses mature trees including a silver birch, fruit trees, flowering laburnums and camellias. An external spiral staircase, made by the Scottish Ballantine Bo’ness Iron Company, descends to the yard.
The lower level, floored entirely in oak, is reached by a contemporary oak staircase in the entry hall. It has a living room and a game room, as well as a garden room with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass doors opening to the back lawn. A bathroom, a utility room and a two-car garage complete the floor.
The third floor, accessed from the entry hallway by a traditional staircase with iron balusters, has four bedrooms. Ceilings are 11 feet high, and many rooms have original ceiling moldings and cornices. The master bedroom has a marble fireplace anda large bay window overlooking the back lawn; across the hall is a bathroom with tub, sink, toilet and bidet by the German company Villeroy & Boch, which also made the ceramic tiles resembling slate. Views encompass Arthur’s Seat, the famous hillside peak in nearby Holyrood Park.
Houses in the Blacket Conservation Area, from the Victorian and Regency periods, are popular with families because of their size and amenities, said Matthew Munro of Knight Frank in Edinburgh, the listing agent. The neighborhood is close to good schools, golf courses and a swimming center. The house is about two miles from Edinburgh’s main rail stop, and less than an hour’s drive from the airport. Edinburgh, a World Heritage Site, is home to several universities, including the University of Edinburgh. The Bank of Scotland and The Royal Bank of Scotland are also based there.
MARKET OVERVIEW
Scotland’s residential market hit its peak in 2007. Prices have dropped 10 to 20 percent since the global economic downturn, brokers said.
Best sellers tend to fall within the range of $450,000 to $1.8 million, as buyers at this level are better able to obtain financing, said Mr. Munro, adding that more expensive properties hadn’t fared as well.
The worst off are properties selling for $380,000 and under, typically smaller homes for first-time buyers who have struggled to get mortgages because of more stringent lending policies, said Andrew Diamond, a partner at Lindsays Solicitors and Estate Agents in Edinburgh.
WHO BUYS IN SCOTLAND
Foreign buyers in Scotland are a diverse if small group, from elsewhere in Europe as well as the Far East, the Middle East and the Americas. According to Neil Harrison of the Edinburgh Solicitor Property Centre, fewer than 2 percent of homes last year in Edinburgh and the surrounding area were sold to foreign buyers, 5 percent to buyers from England, Wales or Northern Ireland, and the remainder to buyers already living in Scotland.
BUYING BASICS
There are no restrictions on foreign buyers. Sellers are required to provide a comprehensive written assessment called a Home Report, documenting condition, energy performance, renovations, and other pertinent information — even disputes with neighbors. Buyers must hire a solicitor, who charges anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. The contract of purchase and sale is drafted by the buyer and seller’s solicitors.
Solicitors in Scotland often sell real estate as well; Mr. Diamond estimates that solicitors sell 80 percent of the properties in Edinburgh. Traditional real estate agents are typically employed by national chains and tend to sell higher end properties.
If prospective buyers seek to hire a solicitor for the purchase of a house that the solicitor is coincidentally selling, the solicitor is required to refer them to another solicitor, Mr. Harrison said. Foreigners can obtain financing through Scottish banks, providing their finances meet bank requirements.
WEB SITES
Scotland tourism: visitscotland.com/
Edinburgh tourism: edinburgh.org/
Edinburgh portal: edinburgh.gov.uk/
Blacket area: blacketedin.org/
LANGUAGES AND CURRENCY
English, Scots, Scottish Gaelic; British pound (£1 = $1.52)
TAXES AND FEES
The transfer tax, known as stamp duty, is about 5 percent of the sale price. The annual property tax, known as council tax, is $3,540.
CONTACT
Matthew Munro, Knight Frank in Edinburgh, 011 44 131 222 9600; .knightfrank.co.uk

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No, They’re Not the Kardashians

America may have glamorous socialites and reality-show celebutantes like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, but when it comes to seriously conspicuous spending, it’s hard to top Britain’s Ecclestone sisters.
Especially when it comes to real estate.
The Ecclestone heirs, Petra Stunt, 24, and Tamara Ecclestone, 28, have spent well over $200 million between them on homes — and home makeovers — in London and Los Angeles. And their spending sprees seem to have fuel to burn.
Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, the 82-year-old billionaire owner of Formula One racing, set aside $4.5 billion in Bambino Holdings, a trust fund primarily intended to be used by his ex-wife, Slavica Rasic, and daughters for real estate investments.
But are these extravagant homes and renovations what Mr. Ecclestone had in mind?
Mrs. Stunt, the younger sister, made waves on this side of the Atlantic two years ago when she bought the late television producer Aaron Spelling’s “Manor” in Holmby Hills for $85 million — still the highest price ever paid for a home in Los Angeles County. She then spent close to $20 million renovating the 57,000-square-foot home, a project that involved some 500 workers who toiled around the clock, according to brokers involved in the sale. What was the rush? She had only three months to get the job done before her wedding to the British entrepreneur James Stunt.
Mrs. Stunt also reportedly owns a town house in the Chelsea neighborhood of London that she bought in 2010 for about $90 million.
Not to be outdone, her sister in 2011 ordered the opulent renovation of the London home on Kensington Palace Gardens, the most expensive street in the country, that she had bought for $70 million. The plans, whose price tag The Daily Mail put at about $27 million, called for a bowling alley, a hair salon and a dog spa.
Lately Ms. Ecclestone has been renting a home in Bel-Air (not far from her sister’s mansion) for $150,000 a month while she house-hunts in Los Angeles. Her search has taken her to Fleur de Lys, a $125 million listing in Holmby Hills modeled after a French palace. More recently she toured a home nearby built on the site of the former Walt Disney estate, now owned by Gabriel Brener, the scion of a Mexican industrialist, who is asking $85 million for his 35,000-square-foot home, once the site of a one-eighth-scale train that Disney used to give neighbors rides on.
Is this a case of sibling rivalry? The British tabloids and some Los Angeles brokers have speculated as much. A better question might be whether Ms. Ecclestone is a real buyer, or is just looking for attention.
The British media have generally portrayed the sisters as spoiled publicity hounds, and have quoted their father criticizing the way they were spending their trust funds. He was none too pleased in 2011 when his elder daughter did a three-part British reality show called “Billion $$ Girl,” which chronicled her lavish lifestyle. That same year she posed naked on her bed fondling £1 million in cash for the photographer Tyler Shields. (Efforts to reach the Ecclestone sisters through business representatives were unsuccessful.)
Perhaps a little too serendipitously, TMZ reporters have been able to interview Ms. Ecclestone as she has been spotted leaving a few majestic estates around Los Angeles.
One broker familiar with her search said Ms. Ecclestone thought the Brener home was too small. “She liked the grounds but found the house not grand enough,” said the broker, who declined to be identified, citing client confidentiality.
She also toured the 24,000-square-foot compound that the “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest bought from the comedian Ellen DeGeneres last year for $37 million. “It was different,” she told TMZ
Brokers in Los Angeles are itching for someone — a billionaire heiress would do nicely — to break the $100 million barrier on a home sale. Two homes in the San Francisco Bay Area have sold for $100 million or more, the most recent being a house in Silicon Valley that sold for $117.5 million, reportedly to a Japanese billionaire.
It’s not as if owners in Los Angeles weren’t trying, though. Some of the best estates in the Bel Air/Beverly Hills/Holmby Hills triangle, where most of the priciest homes are, have been listed above $100 million, including Fleur de Lys, the Beverly House ($115 million) and the financier Gary Winnick’s eight-acre spread in Bel-Air, which he wants to sell for $225 million, brokers said.

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House Hunting in... Hungary

 
This four-bedroom stone house overlooking Lake Balaton, the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, is built in traditional Hungarian style, with native gray limestone and thick wooden beams; it was built in 1997 and renovated in 2012. Spanning 3,220 square feet, it has gas heating and oak floors, and sits on almost three-quarters of an acre on the Tihany peninsula, part of the protected Balaton Uplands National Park, said Agnes Kacsmarik, a broker with Engel & Völkers Budahill Center, which has the listing. 
The ground floor has wood-framed glass doors opening to the pool terrace, as well as an open kitchen and a dining area with a traditional “beehive kiln” made of clay. The kitchen has white wooden cabinets, butcher-block countertops, a double-sized refrigerator and appliances by the Dutch company ATAG. A brick arch to the rear of the dining area opens to an airy skylit hallway flanked by glass doors leading to guest bedrooms. A full bathroom tiled in white stone is also off the dining area.  
Upstairs, a living room opens to a large balcony with panoramic views of the lake. Two bedrooms, one of them the master, are tucked under pitched ceilings, as is a bathroom with tub and fittings by the French designer Philippe Starck and the German company Villeroy & Boch. The house is being sold unfurnished, although a price for the furnishings could be negotiated.
The property also has a traditional wine cellar, and a 26-by-16-foot outdoor swimming pool with a hot tub for eight people.
The Tihany peninsula is on the north side of Lake Balaton, which is known for its historic properties, as well as for boating and wineries, Ms. Kacsmarik said. Swimmers favor resorts on the lake’s shallower southern side. Convenience stores are within walking distance, and the area has many restaurants. Tennis and golf are popular, and the Balaton Royal Golf and Yacht Club is a 15-minute drive. The house is an hour and a half from Budapest, and about 30 minutes from the nearest international airport in Heviz. 
MARKET OVERVIEW
 
Foreign investment virtually came to a halt after the global real estate crisis, said Gabor Borbely, an associate director of the commercial brokerage CBRE Hungary. Sales volume plunged, construction fell to an all-time low and mortgage lending all but disappeared, he said.
However, recent purchases by foreign investors show the residential market is reviving a bit, driven in large part by foreclosure sales, Mr. Borbely said. “Many developers/investors see current low values as a good entry point,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Ms. Kacsmarik agreed, saying home prices had fallen by about 25 to 30 percent since the downturn.  “Owing to the significant price drop,” she said, “there are some excellent opportunities available to property hunters.”  
The Lake Balaton region has long been the prime vacation resort for Hungarians, and foreign buyers are now discovering it. While the home market outside Budapest has remained mostly stagnant, there have been sales in towns around Lake Balaton, a region that is home to several universities, said Bela Varga, a lawyer specializing in real estate and investments.  
“In university towns,” he added, “students generate more transactions, and at Lake Balaton, where presumably prices have reached their lowest level, foreigners see investment opportunity.”
Ms. Kacsmarik said demand was strongest at the high end, for apartments and houses with views on the northern shore of the lake. A large apartment would cost at least half a million dollars, while the most expensive houses can reach $3 million.  The southern shore is less expensive; there, a large home with views starts at $390,000. 
WHO BUYS IN HUNGARY
 
Budapest was popular among European buyers, particularly the Irish, before the financial crisis. The Lake Balaton region was, and still is, more appealing to retired and affluent Hungarians seeking a vacation home.  German retirees and vacationers who have business or family ties to Hungary also buy in the region, especially residents of the former East Germany who grew up vacationing at the lake, Ms. Kacsmarik said. 
In recent years Russian buyers have discovered the city of Heviz, which has hot springs known for their therapeutic qualities.  “In the windows of the real estate agencies,” she said, “the adverts are showcased in Cyrillic letters.”  
BUYING BASICS
  There are no buying restrictions on European Union citizens, Mr. Varga said. All other foreigners must obtain a permit, but the process is straightforward, and the permit is granted in almost every case, he said. The permit has a stamp duty of about $215. 
Buyers typically pay a lawyer’s fee of 1 percent of the sale price, plus a stamp duty of 4 percent at the closing, he said. The cost of the land registry fee is minimal, less than $30 total. 
WEB SITES
 
Hungarian National Tourist Office: gotohungary.com 
Hungarian government: kormany.hu/en
LANGUAGES AND CURRENCY
 
Hungarian; Hungarian forint (1 forint = $.0042) 
TAXES AND FEES
 
There are no property taxes on this home; there is an annual tourist tax of about $800. 
CONTACT 
Agnes Kacsmarik, Engel & Völkers Budahill Center, 011-36-1-392-03-88; EngelVoelkers.com
 

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